Money was tight as
always but Nick wanted to do something for sick and underprivileged children.
Bravo Nick.

“What can we do Tel, any ideas?”

With the Variety Club
I arranged a huge kids’ party at the Bonnington Hotel in Bloomsbury and went in
search of a star guest, finally hiring Rod Hull and Emu. It was not as expensive as I
expected. Rod was down on his luck and had just moved to a small cottage in
Sussex. Nick agreed the fee but baulked at the Rolls-Royce Rod wanted to be picked
up in.

The great day came and around 50 kids were
waiting – but no sign of Rod. I contacted the driver. Rod had insisted on doing
a pub crawl on the way. Finally they arrived at the Bonnington with Rod much the worse for wear.

An hour later Nick called me in. He’d had a
call from the hotel manager. Rod was locked in his office. He and Emu had run
amok in the kitchens and Emu had been seriously goosing screaming waitresses!
“Sort it out Tel! Do what you have to.”

I got down to the Bonnington pronto and shoved
red-faced Rod and Emu back into the Roller with strict instructions to the
driver not to stop on the way home. Then I pacified the management by making a donation
to the Bonnington’s favourite charity on behalf of The Express.

Sadly Rod died shortly afterwards – after
falling off the roof of his cottage mucking about with his TV aerial.

***

But back to those early days when the Dark Forces
of life on the editorial floor were the accountants. As the management
struggled with the finances of the paper, a closure or a merger with the Daily
Mail were the main topics of bar talk at The Punch, along with nightly debates
about when our pay-offs would come.

But our real outrage was the pending
closure of the tea bar – a short trolley push away from the Library. We saw the
writing on the wall when tea lady Doris got her marching orders, closely
followed by Maureen and the shutters came down.

These were matters of great
concern and messengers Harry and Jack took a petition to the Imperial Father
but alas to no avail. The management dismissed everyone’s heartfelt plea that
liquid refreshment was vital to the health and well being of night workers.

***

The closure of the tea bar did work in some
subs’ favour. If they wanted to buy a round of tea, they would have to make a long
journey along the corridor, through double doors, up a stone staircase and down
another corridor to the canteen, a journey that could take considerable time,
especially when queuing for eight teas at the end of it.

Much-loved and brainy
Oxbridge news sub Brian Thistlethwaite, now sadly departed, was a keen buyer of
the tea round. He would disappear from his desk and a good half an hour or so
later materialise in the doorway to the newsroom with a satisfied Poppinjay
smile and a tray of steaming teas for his table. He blazed a trail for others.

***

Headlines were a real art form in those days
and were often stressful. When the extremely affable Tony Armstrong (who always nestled his half of lager close
to his chest in his left hand and his pipe in his right) was in the Chief
Sub’s chair or in charge of the Foreign Page, he would reject nearly every
headline many of the subs put forward from shorts to page leads. On the nights
he was on duty a competition would take place on the desk to see who would get the
most rejections. The figures were staggering … anything from seven or eight to
20! I achieved around 15 one
evening before I lost the will to live. The headline that went through was the
first one I had submitted. To be fair he was being professional, a
perfectionist in pursuit of his art. A decent bloke.

***

The yearly
pay round was always accompanied by a bun fight with the management and between
the hacks themselves. For it was at the chapel meetings that the old tensions
between subs and reporters flared up. The reporters were bitter about the subs’
four-day week and the subs were resentful about the reporters’ generous
expenses. But somehow a claim was formulated that suited both and put to the
management. On one occasion when Lloyd Turner was FOC and legendary news sub
Ralph (Grey Fox) Mineards was in his
team, they were due to negotiate with the unpredictable Jocelyn Stevens, pictured left, upstairs. But first there were preparations to make.

Lloyd and Ralph went to a little office down
the corridor and wrote a script for the main part of the claim, which they
rehearsed like a double act in a film scene at Elstree Studios. Lloyd bought up
the subject of inflation and the cost of modern day living. Ralph practised
measured, reasoned comments, acting as if he was trying to understand the
management’s point of view. This went on for a while until Lloyd got angry. Ralph
gripped his arm and tried to calm him. But Lloyd banged his fist on the desk,
stood up, grabbed his papers and slammed out. Ralph immediately became the
voice of reason to the empty seat where the imaginary Stevens was sitting and
promised to calm the tensions because he had an idea how they could settle
matters as gentlemen in such difficult times and help the management reach a
deal.

He then went outside too. After a decent
absence they both stepped into the empty room again and came up with a formula
which Lloyd had ‘reluctantly’ agreed in order to keep the peace and avoid a
strike. All they needed on the day was the right moment to launch their plan
when negotiations moved to a climax. And that’s exactly what happened. Jocelyn
thought he had won the day – but Lloyd and Ralph got what they set out to get.
Ralph beamed with pride every time he revealed how Jocelyn later privately
thanked him for his intervention.

***

These years saw the dawning of the tabloid
Express; the first colour pages in the paper (colour will never catch on moaned many) and new technology. But
one thing that would never change was the ‘Friendly
Fire’ that always came with the subs and reporters at war. Claims of
missing bylines, wrong bylines, creative lines cut from copy, intros rewritten
and spoiled, the list of grumbles from the reporters was long.

Guns blazed from
the other side too … subs claimed reporters got their facts wrong; missed the
best intro, overwrote with boring copy and couldn’t spell. But like MPs of all
parties they were always friends in the bar … until Christmas when frustrations
on both sides boiled over into drunken bread roll raids at Christmas parties in
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

The subs would storm the reporters’ room in the
middle of their turkey and port and hurl a salvo of crusty rolls that would
cascade off the heads of Luck, Bomber Burns, O’Flaherty, Willshire, Walton,
McGowan, Symons, Gill and others. Twenty minutes later the reporters would raid
the subs. One Christmas I was attacked with a gooey Christmas spray that stuck
in my hair for the rest of the week as the Christmas battle spilled over on to
the staircase. Amazingly, most of the diners would return to the newsroom and
produce some of their finest work.

Hollynote:
The Gents on the editorial floor, virtually a cupboard with two cubicles and
two urinals, was nearly always the resting place of those who couldn’t quite
take the pace of Christmas parties. Only their legs were seen sticking out from
under the cubicle doors for the rest of the night.

***

When you
came out of The Gents you walked across the corridor of lockers into the
Newsroom - a huge musty and messy engine room with walls yellow from cigarette
smoke … subs, reporters, The Backbench, Art Desk and Newsdesk and Picture Desk lived here. Turn
right and keep going and you came to the Sports Desk where such greats as
Desmond Hackett, Don Woodward, Dave Emery pictured right, Harry Pashley, John Morgan, Norman
Dixon, John Lloyd and others were in residence during some of these years.

Turn
left in the newsroom and you came to The Editor’s prestigious office that overshadowed
the corner of the building and looked down on Fleet Street where Jocelyn
Stevens once stood and raised a glass of champagne to mock a protest march by
striking miners who jeered up at him on their way to Downing Street. Outside this
office in the hallway was the famed, grubby magnolia Arthur Christiansen
bulletin box. Amazingly it was to stay in that spot right up until
the end of the Eighties.

Come out of The Gents and turn sharp left and
you walked down a short corridor to the Features Department with all its nooks
and crannies … home to Ross Benson, Geoffrey Levy, Peter Hitchens, David Benson
and so many more greats during this time. This was soon to be presided over by
the triumvirate of Alan Frame, Geoff Compton and Chris Williams. What fun they
were. This was the time when loyal and much-loved secretaries such as Jeanette Bishop and Esther Harrod spent hours listening to stressed journalists bleating about their
promotion setbacks.

This Features Room was always where the chapel
meetings were held on serious issues like money. Everyone would be told to gather
here and stop work during House Agreement talks to send a warning shot across
the bows of the management. But some writers and subs couldn’t help themselves
and would often bring in page proofs to edit. No wonder the gentlemen
journalists were never taken as seriously as the NGA and SOGAT. They would just
go home and that was the end of it. The management always caved in to them.